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Monday, July 31, 2017

There has been some serious SHINGing going on around this muther fucker.

And by SHINGing, I mean scything because of the SHING SHING SHINGing it does when I'm slicing oh-so-satisfyingly through acres of 10' tall thistles and the tall grass before it turns into fire bait.

SHINGSHINGSHING

I love it.

Seriously, it is like therapy. Like hillbilly dun lost 'er shit therapy. Our neighbors think we're nuts. And dangerous. Which is really something coming from the likes of these fine armed folks.

The cow horn holster (for the whetstone, obviously) isn't helping.

Anyway - I've been scything. Grass, thistles, wild pea tumbleweeds that are a super pain in the ass to scythe because of the stupid ass way they grow and then get all snarled up and grow giant trunks that are really hard to SHING through.

It's been fairly successful. And despite the physical effort it looks like I'm exerting, it's actually way lighter work than hauling around that weedwhacker. Plus I'm not breathing in gas fumes. Or straining to hear Gojira over the roar of the motor. Or sweating my tits off in coveralls to avoid having grass shot up my pooper.

That shit's a fucking scene, man.

But with the scything I get to ditch the coveralls, groove to whatever French metal I please at a reasonable volume and peacefully SHINGSHINGSHING my way across the hillside.

I mean, until I SHING a yellow jacket nest, of course.

SHINGWHATTHUFUCK?!

Then it's just all scythe-throwing and girlish shrieking and Bubba yelling "WHAT WHAT WHAT??" and me running through the woods at a rate so expeditious that after the Great Yellow Jacket Mauling of 2017 concluded, he tried to comfort me by telling me that he was impressed I could run that fast in work boots.

And this is an OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO that Bubba can't rescue me from because he's allergic as shit to stingers.

So, yeah, probably not the best and smartest move for me to be hurtling myself down the hillside in his direction looking for help. I realized my error about halfway down the hill, but I was moving at such a speed (see sub-2 hr marathon in work boots) that momentum, gravity and the spacing of the oak trees predetermined my path. A path which dumped me out nearly at his feet. And me waving my arms and shrieking "NO NO NO" didn't deter him from coming to my rescue and then being aggressively shooed away so that I could find and kill those stinging fuckers myself.

ASSHOLES. UGH.

Later, after I came down from the adrenaline and rage from my yellow jacket-fueled run, I inspected the yellow jacket nest from afar.

It seemed ACTIVE.

When I went back the next morning to fetch my scythe, which I'd hurtled to the ground in my hasty escape, I found it laying ever so conveniently across TWO entrances to a massive nest.

Delightful.

Thankfully it was cool out and there wasn't much action on at the nest yet, so I pulled my hoodie up, cinched it down around my face, hiked out there, snatched up my scythe, gave the nest a good old American middle finger (it was 4th of July after all) and marched back to the house.

ASSHOLES. UGH.

And then, because I will NOT have my foggy morning dog walk ruined by the likes of a bunch of asshole yellow jackets, I went downstairs to make tea and go for my walk.

Love fog. LOVEIT.

Except then SUPER FUN fishing a yellow jacket out of my sweatshirt when I sat down to put my shoesonyaythanksforthat.

I'm afraid that one bore the brunt of my rage at his entire nest and species. There was not a lot left of that dude when my boots and I were done with him.

GEEZGODDAMN.

So yeah, scythes are awesome for cutting grass but not good for defense against stinging insects.

Got it.

---------
Update a month later, here. Hi! I'm on vacation yay!

The nest was just raided the other night by another suddenly-a-lot-less-loathed beast of the hillside - a skunk.

At first I was pissed when I woke up to the waft of skunk on the morning breeze but when Bubba told me that HEY AWESOME the nest was busted open and there wasn't any flying going on up there anymore, I became very forgiving with the skunks.

I mean, they are fluffy and cute after all. And wasp hungry.

AVENGE ME, MIGHTY FEARLESS SKUNKS INTIMIDATORS OF ALL PREDATORS!

They know. That's why they walk so slow across the road when I'm driving to work in the early hours.

8 comments:

You amuse me greatly. Like seriously greatly. And wasps are a fucking bastard. We keep having to knock down mini-nests in our overhang. Luckily, no one in our house is allergic but those fuckers need to go.

OW. I did not know that skunks eat hornets. It still doesn't make me love skunks or anything, but that's one point in their favor. I haven't seen any ground hornet nests up here in on the border. Maybe the ground freezes too hard or something? Who knows.

P.S. A. had a similar moment of "I never knew you could move so fast" when our youngest son got knocked down by a wave in the lake last time we were at Blackrock and was literally floating facedown, completely still. I wasn't even in the water, but when I saw him go down I was up and out of my chair so fast A. didn't even register I was moving until I was almost to the drowning child. He never believed I would react so quickly in an emergency. (Probably especially at seven months pregnant, when I'm not exactly speedy to begin with.) I was like, "What do you think a mother's instinct is FOR, man? So her offspring don't DIE."

[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.